The Battle for Batley and Spen

The election of Labour’s Tracy Brabin as the first Mayor of West Yorkshire last week will have been a bitter sweet moment for Keir Starmer.

Whilst undoubtedly pleased to have won, it led Ms Brabin to step down from her position as MP for the West Yorkshire seat of Batley and Spen, triggering a by-election to take place on a date to be confirmed.  After the party’s heavy defeat in Hartlepool, it’s a by-election Labour will be looking to nervously.

On the surface there is a difference.

At the 2019 election in Hartlepool the Brexit Party, whose voters effectively handed seat to the Conservatives last week, polled over 10,500 votes. This compared to Labour’s majority at the time of over 3,500.

In contrast, again in 2019, Labour’s majority in Batley and Spen was just over 3,500. Even if the 1,678 people who voted for the Brexit Party at the time had voted Conservative it would not have been enough to defeat Labour. As such, this is a by-election that is likely to hinge on where the 6,432 voters in the constituency who supported the Heavy Woollen District Independents decide to cast their vote.

Given that the party’s leader when it registered with the Electoral Commission in 2017 was a former chair for UKIP's Dewsbury, Batley and Spen branch, it would not be a surprise if those who voted for them in 2019 were more inclined to vote Conservative than Labour.

To added to Labour’s woes, if all the votes cast in the local elections last week in the wards making up Batley and Spen (Batley East, Batley West, Birstall and Birkenshaw, Cleckheaton, Heckmondwike and Liversedge and Gomersal) were added up it just about gave the Conservatives the edge over Labour – 11,586 votes to 11,482.

With Batley and Spen, unlike Hartlepool, also having a more recent history of Conservative representation in Parliament having been held for it by Elizabeth Peacock between 1983 and 1997, the scene is set for a tight but potentially revealing contest.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Buyers Regret Over Brexit?

This week marked five years since the UK voted to leave the European Union, a decision which has shaken British politics in a way that few would have foreseen. To mark the occasion, Savanta ComRes this week published polling suggesting that if the referendum were held today, remain would just win, with 51% of respondents saying they would vote to stay in the EU compared to 49% who would vote to leave. The poll shows that there would be little switching from either side, with 6% of those who voted remain in 2016 saying they would not vote to leave, and 7% of those who originally voted to leave saying they would now vote remain. Savanta ComRes go on to say: “That means the Remain edge in this poll comes from those who did not vote in 2016, with this group being more than twice as likely to vote for Remain (71%) than Leave (29%).” The poll found however that if the public were asked instead to choose between joining the EU or not, 51% would vote not to become a member, whilst 49% w...
Read more

Can Labour Look Forward to a Decade in Power?

Speaking at the start of the year the new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, spoke of a "decade of national renewal" being the "central, defining purpose" of a future Labour government. Fast forward to today, and for those now in Government the question will be whether the election results can give Labour any confidence at the prospect of a decade in power. Some might conclude that it is absurd to be asking this question, given Labour’s 172 seat majority in the Commons. That is just 7 short of the majority New Labour secured in 1997 which ushered in 13 years of Labour rule. However, dig deeper, and the reality is that Labour’s victory is thin. According to the election results Labour won on Thursday having secured around 9.7 million votes, equivalent to 33.7% of the votes cast. To set that into context, according to House of Commons Library data , that compares to the 13.5 million votes (43.2% vote share) Labour got in 1997. What is more, the total number of ...
Read more

Rishi’s Ratings Sink

Rishi Sunak has registered his weakest favourability ratings since becoming Prime Minister according to new polling by Ipsos Mori. It reports that whilst the Labour Leader, Keir Starmer, has a net favourability score of -7, Rishi Sunak’s has sunk to -19. With Boris Johnson continuing to breathe down Rishi Sunak’s neck, Ipsos goes on to note: “More than half of 2019 Conservative voters are favourable to Johnson (55%) while 49% say the same for Sunak. Overall, among 2019 Conservative voters, Johnson scores +29 while Sunak scores +23.   However, Johnson’s lead owes more to falling ratings for Mr Sunak rather than improving ratings for the former PM.” Looking at the parties as a whole, Labour has a net favourability rating of +2 with the Conservatives on -29. When it coms to Brexit, 55% of respondents told Ipsos that leaving the EU had had a negative impact on the country, with just 21% saying it had been positive. It continues: “If we subtract the proportion saying Brexit has...
Read more